


Power of Words

by levitatethis



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-17
Updated: 2010-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:44:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levitatethis/pseuds/levitatethis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carefully chosen words set into play a series of destructive events</p>
            </blockquote>





	Power of Words

**I   
**  
Words have the power to destroy.

They have the potential to be an unstoppable weapon.

"Mohinder's dead."

The words sputter out of Peter's mouth; sound waves encased in blood, they pierce the air before slamming into the ground.

Deep gashes along his body begin the process of mending themselves, skin invisibly sutures together. Peter unsteadily rises to his feet, the broken bones of his legs realigning. His eyes remain steady and focused on his attacker staring at him from the other side of the rooftop.

No response.

"Did you hear me? Mohinder is --,"

"I really need to get that ability," Sylar finally says as his eyes widen in awe as Peter's body regenerates.

Blood drips from lesions along Sylar's torso and the patch of skin ripped from his neck. Torn muscle reduces his movements to painful actions.

"It's your fault," Peter yells. "After everything, those still left standing decided to make an example out of him – because of you."

Sylar's face remains unchanging, unaffected by the words that cut down the distance between them.

"They brutalized him. Took him apart slowly, limb by limb. They knew you wouldn't come to find out where he disappeared to. You didn't even notice he was suddenly gone! You were the only one who could have saved him but it never crossed your mind to even look."

Peter now stands tall with the conviction behind his words feeding his rant.

"Is this the part where I'm supposed to shed a tear?" Sylar sarcastically intones. "Mohinder knew the risks of working with me, of working with you _Pete._ I wasn't his babysitter."

Disgust rises throughout Peter's body at the callous words.

"You really are a son of a bitch," Peter spits out. "I told Mohinder you would never return any courtesy he showed you, but he wouldn't listen. Said that when it came to The Company you had similar goals in mind."

Sylar still says nothing. He and Peter slowly start circling each other, making use of the roof layout. Peter stalks with glaring eyes while Sylar limply swaggers with frigid eyes.

"React!" Peter shouts at Sylar's cold expression.

"He never forgave you," Peter continues. "He knew you were a murderous bastard to the end. And still --,"

"He was naïve," Sylar finishes Peter's sentence. "He was weak. Do you know what happens to the weak, Petrelli? They make the strong vulnerable."

Peter wants to rush forward and rip Sylar's head off but he does not want to give the killer the satisfaction of the fight. Instead he comes to a dead stop and aims one last hateful stare at Sylar.

"It might as well have been you who took his life," are Peter's final retaliatory words as he shoots up into the sky. 

**  
II**

"I told you, he's a monster. He didn't even flinch when I told him Mohinder's dead," Peter fumes with annoyance in this voice.

"Really," Bennet says, his tone observational instead of questioning.

He peers from his seat behind his cluttered office desk at a lamenting Peter who is slouched on the sofa at the centre of the room.

"He didn't care," Peter mutters in response.

"I highly doubt that," Bennet says standing up. He walks around the desk towards the windows of his office and gazes outside but his thoughts do not drift from the conversation at hand.

"You weren't there Noah," Peter responds. "All he cared about was himself. He basically said that Mohinder deserved it."

Bennet does not respond immediately. He repeats Peter's words in his head. Turning his gaze towards the empath he sees watchful eyes with a curious expression staring at him.

"He was cold. Completely unemotional?"

"Yes," answers Peter.

"And after you told him about Mohinder he didn't continue fighting you? Instead he deflected all your attempts to goad him?"

"Yes – am I missing something here?" Peter asks quizzically as he sits upright, paying careful attention to Bennet's questions.

"He belittled Mohinder to you?" Bennet continues adding no inflection to his voice to indicate what he is thinking.

"Yes," Peter replies exasperatedly. "Noah --,"

"Give him time Peter."

Standing up, Peter crosses the floor between them. Up close his eyes search Bennet's for answers, any sense of guidance for what is being put into motion. Bennet's eyes remain unreadable but the infallible confidence with which he carries himself suggests to Peter that he knows what he speaks of.

"Sylar will do exactly what we expect him to," Bennet states. "He will do exactly what we need him to."

"But --," Peter attempts to say before Bennet cuts him off with a hand to his shoulder.

"You have to trust me, Peter. Things are going exactly as planned." 

 

**III**

The apartment is cold.

The emptiness that overwhelms it goes beyond the temporary loss of a human life; a breath, a heartbeat, patterned steps across the floor, a ringing voice from one room to the next.

This pervasive absence is a void that comes of sudden, total, abandonment. There is nothing left here.

With purposeful steps Sylar strolls around the rooms he once was very familiar with. Time has passed with little altered except –

Sylar shakes the biting thought from his head and focuses on letting his eyes take in what remains.

A half empty container of chai sits out on the kitchen counter; the map board stands pushed into a corner still marked with pushpins and string connecting strangers the world over.

Sylar walks over to the packed bookshelves and stands contemplatively. A wide array of book titles run into each other reminding Sylar how much Mohinder loves to read.

_Loved to read._   
Past tense.

A framed photo of Mohinder and Molly from a Halloween night, five years ago Sylar guesses since Molly would be about sixteen now, sits perched on the edge of one shelf, dead centre of Sylar's eye line.

The happy smile on Mohinder's face angers Sylar and he is thankful he does not have to put into words why. He slams the photo image side down and drags his feet towards Mohinder's bedroom.

He freezes in the doorway deliberating over his right to enter this room before he remembers –

Pushing paralyzing thoughts aside he steps into the room and sits on the edge of the bed. Leaning forward he places his head in his hands and closes his eyes.

It is faint, almost non-existent; but he can still smell the diluted traces of Mohinder's scent.

He briefly thinks about his first stop that day at Mohinder's lab. Sterile and lacking anything that wo uld have confirmed Mohinder's existence at any time there, Sylar had left almost as soon as he had arrived.

The apartment was supposed to rectify everything. Sylar had saved this visit for last with the expectation that it would not be…_this._

This stop was supposed to prove that Peter was a liar.

But there is no indication of falsity here.

_Now_ it hits him. Only now do Peter's words penetrate his mind and sear the callousness he has surrounded himself with out of self-protection. He has never been afraid of the truth or cringed at the possible consequences the way others have, except with –

Now he despises it. The finality overwhelms him.

Mohinder is dead.

Peter is right.

_It is his fault._ 

 

**IV   
**  
**_The Dead_**

**Kimiko Takahashi**   
_Hanged from loft rafters; disemboweled._

**James Duncan   
**_Arms and legs severed from torso._

**Luiz Elizondo**   
_Eyes gauged out, tongue, fingers, toes amputated._

**Daniel Iglukart**   
_Over one hundred lashes over body through to the bone.   
_  
**Indira Virushni**   
_Repeatedly suffocated and buried alive._

**Michael Hodges   
**_Over fifty puncture wounds, injected with household cleaner, cyanide, mercury._

**Bob Bishop**   
_Decapitation, body burned._ 

 

**V   
**  
"Jesus," Nathan gasps at the gruesome crime scene photographs. "He did this? "

"Yes," is Bennet's reply, a hint of shock he is unable to disguise peppers his tone.

Unable to stomach the images Nathan hands the photographs to Peter. While Peter's eyes grow wide with repulsion at the barbarity captured in bordered images, Nathan stops in the centre of Bennet's office. He raises his right hand to his forehead as if trying to control the rushing tide of thoughts racing through his mind.

"Did you know it was going to be like this?" Peter asks Bennet, finally lifting eyes from the images.

Bennet takes a deep sigh before respsonding.

"Not to this extent."

The Petrelli brothers both shoot questioning looks at Bennet, catching him in a cross fire of uncertainty.

"Not to this extent?" Nathan repeats admonishingly, turning his body towards Bennet in a standoff position.

"What have we done?" Peter asks worriedly.

"We haven't done anything," Bennet says calmly trying to retain some control over the situation. "Sylar did this."

"Because we set it in motion," Peter reminds him.

"Look, this needed to be done and you both know it. These people were the last of the problem --,"

"That we know of," Nathan interrupts.

"They were the last," Bennet restates throwing a cautioning look at Nathan. "Sylar was the only one capable of ensuring they would never be able to continue their horrific experiments – on people like you. Don't forget that."

Peter throws a pleading look at Nathan but his older brother already looks to be reluctantly letting Bennet's words sink in.

"But we --," Peter addresses Bennet again.

"Provided the motivation. Sylar decided on his own method of operation," Bennet asserts. "It's done now. This is the new beginning."

"And Sylar?" Nathan asks folding his arms across his chest.

"Has served his purpose. We'll need to remove him from the field. Permanently," Bennet insists.

A pensive silence surrounds the three men. It speaks of all the work put into arriving at this moment, the risks and sacrifices justified as being necessary.

"I think it's time to bring an old acquaintance back into the fold," Bennet suggests.

Glancing towards the photos now laying on Bennet's desk, Peter's concerned eyes cross the floor to Nathan's watchful eyes and then move over to Bennet's encouragingly calculated ones.

"Let me talk to him first," says Peter. 

 

**VI   
**  
"Peter? This is a welcome surprise," Mohinder grins from the kitchenette section of what amounts to a bachelor apartment.

"I thought I'd join you for lunch," Peter says awkwardly trying to force a smile to his face.

"Of course. Stir fry okay for you?"

"Yes."

Mohinder dishes up two plates of food and he and Peter settle into an unusually quite meal. Mohinder steals quick glances at Peter, noticing his friend's nervous looks back at him. Mohinder's eyes go to the food barely touched on Peter's plate, food morsels picked at and pushed around. He cannot help but notice the folder that Peter has brought with him sitting closed on the table, Peter's hand resting on top.

"Is the food that terrible?" jokes Mohinder.

"Huh? Oh…uh, no, sorry."

Mohinder lays his fork on his plate and pushes it away.

"What's going on Peter?" Mohinder, suddenly serious, asks.

"It's not so bad down here?" Peter says looking around the layout of the living quarters, ignoring Mohinder's question.

Mohinder watches Peter with investigative eyes before responding.

"It's fantastic. I love living a mile below Primatech in some elaborate labyrinth with absolutely no idea what's happening out in the world. My favourite part is when the door lock clicks in place reminding me I can never leave. "

Peter rests his gaze back on Mohinder and sighs. Leaning back in his chair he fixes a stern look on the geneticist.

"It's not as if this was against your will. You understood Noah's plan and agreed to it. You knew we couldn't take the risk of Sylar seeking you out first and jeopardizing everything.

Mohinder says nothing at Peter's response. A moment later he shakes his head and gives his companion a small smile.

"I'm sorry, Peter. You're right. I'm just going a bit stir crazy down here."

Peter gives him a sympathetic smile.

"You'll be out of here soon."

Mohinder's eyes widen in surprise.

"It's done then?" Mohinder asks. "Sylar did it? Just as Noah said?"

Peter's hesitant yes raises Mohinder's concern.

"Peter, what is --,"

The question is cut off by Peter pushing the folder across the table.

"I should have given this to you before you ate," Peter mutters.

Immediately Mohinder picks the folder up and walks away from the table, towards his work desk. Standing up from the table Peter nervously watches Mohinder slowly flip through the photographs.

"My god," Mohinder gasps. "He…"

Mohinder looks at Peter with an expression of devastation.

"What exactly did you guys tell him?"

"I told him what Noah said I should."

"No! No, you didn't," Mohinder's words rush out attempting to rationalize the situation being presented to him in living colour.

"I know Sylar's a murderer but this," Mohinder shakes the photos, "He hasn't done something like this since the beginning and even then…He's much more…methodical…surgical. This is --,"

"Torture," Peter completes Mohinder's rambling thought.

"What did you guys do to him?" Mohinder asks unable to reconcile the Sylar he knows with the one who has unleashed a fury of indescribable hatred on the bodies of a select few.

"News of your death did this to him," Peter states both out of truth as well as not wanting to shoulder all the responsibility for what Sylar has done.

"I doubt that. Sylar cares only for himself," Mohinder argues.

"Apparently not. Noah was right."

Peter approaches Mohinder and gingerly places a cautious hand on his shoulder. He can feel the tension running through Mohinder's body; confused worry is in the eyes he rests on Peter's face.

"I can't begin to explain it," Peter solemnly says, "Noah suspected that Sylar would retaliate when he heard news of your death, but the extent to which he has…avenged you was never expected."

The words hang heavy in the air.

"No one can turn back from this," Mohinder quietly affirms. "Not even Sylar."

"You knew from the start he would have to be --," Peter begins.

"Destroyed," Mohinder coldly says.

"At the end of it all," Peter finishes.

"What do you want from me?" Mohinder opines.

Again Peter is hesitant to share Bennet's orders.

"Noah says you should be there," Peter manages to say.

"Why? That was never – does he want me to stun Sylar into a state of paralyzing shock?" Mohinder demands angrily.

Peter removes his hand from Mohinder's shoulder. Leaning against the desk, hands on either side of his body gripping the edge, he carefully picks his words.

"Sort of. Noah says you being there will help to initially diminish Sylar's resistance; confuse him so that…"

Unable to complete the thought Peter looks towards the door wanting to be anywhere but there.

"No merciful end," Mohinder mutters.

"He doesn't deserve it," Peter says.

"Is that you or Noah speaking?" Mohinder asks sarcastically, focusing heated eyes on Peter.

"Mohinder, given what he's done to you --,"

"Even after what he's done _for_ you; for the cause. We turned him into this…weapon. The least we can do is end it painlessly," Mohinder nearly pleads. "He wasn't always so --,"

"We both know that's not going to happen," Peter sighs.

Mohinder is unsure if the frustration in Peter's voice is due to his own insistence that Sylar be dealt with humanely or if Peter also feels Bennet's orders are harsh.

"When?" Mohinder finally asks.

Peter throws him a surprised look before replying, "A few days."

"Can I see Molly before?"

"Yes, of course," says Peter with a smile of relief. 

 

**VII   
**  
"I really _am_ sorry for turning your life upside down yet again."

Molly warmly smiles at Mohinder and says, "I think we both know you got the worst part of it stuck down here indefinitely. At least I got to leave each day."

She squeezes Mohinder's hand and lets her eyes wander the faux apartment; cell is what she refers to it in her mind, that Mohinder has called home for a month and a half.

"What do you want me to do?" she casually asks knowing there is intent in Mohinder's voice.

"Find Hiro. Find out where Sylar is," Mohinder simply states.

Molly's unsure eyes suggest worry.

"Are you sure Hiro will help?" she asks.

"Yes. I hope. Hiro was one of the few dissenting voices to this plan. I think he feared that precisely _this_ would happen. He'll help me," Mohinder cautiously explains trying to keep any harsh specifics from Molly. The less she knows, he reasons, the less likely she is to suffer any potential fallout.

"Okay," she agrees. 

 

**VIII**

In the movies madness tends to be conveyed in a cliché colour by numbers scheme.

Incoherent thoughts spilled out on walls, the stench of filth infused into clothes, utter dishevelment in the rotting body as it steadily forgets itself.

Mohinder is not surprised to find Sylar at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Everything in the apartment is precisely placed, the sterility of a hospital in the air.

Clad in all black, short messy hair, three days worth growth of stubble along his face, Sylar is the muted Grim Reaper; seated at the kitchen table with radio static hanging in the air.

The only indication that something is off is the brief expression of pain that flits across his face when Mohinder suddenly appears before him, out of thin air.

Syar raises his left hand to his head trying to press out the invisible dullness that aches at the appearance.

"Mohinder?" Sylar's confused voice calls out.

Mohinder is momentarily caught off guard.

In all the time he has known Sylar he has learned to read the unspoken language designed for only them. There has always existed some motivation behind Sylar's eyes conveying his thoughts, wants, hates. Justifications in an optical sign language; they have continuously redefined where the lines are drawn.

Yet even in the change there was constancy, looking ahead towards the greater picture.

There is nothing now.

Wordless eyes take over Mohinder's, void of anything but the here and now.

Sylar drops his hand from his head while his face goes expressionless.

"You're dead?" Sylar asks although his tone harbours undeniable certainty.

There is a second where Mohinder is unsure of what to say, forgetting his plan for being here. Two years since he last saw, let alone spoke to, Sylar and he finds himself unexpectedly struggling with emotions he thought he had intractably filed away.

What pulls Mohinder back from the oblivion of consuming thoughts that declare, "If only," and "Why?" is the reminder that if he loses sight of his mission he will have squandered the one chance in his life to unquestionably do the right thing.

Everything else Mohinder has done, even when he could argue reasons for why, has been based on his best guess.

This time, right now, is the one thing he knows in his heart to be true.

He ignores Sylar's question and, remaining standing across from the seated killer, asks one of his own.

"You've been busy?"

A grin of insanity, madness, and complete detachment rises on Sylar's face. Dead eyes and a twisted smile are all that remain of a man whose cunning manipulations once induced sleepless nights and waking nightmares.

The power he holds now is not informed and calculated. Rather it feels chaotic despite its personal usage, as if with the mission completed there is nothing to do but consume everything left in its wake.

"Yes," Sylar answers.

Mohinder steps closer to the table but still says nothing.

"They deserved it," Sylar states.

"Not all of them," Mohinder counters. Now he knows he is speaking of all of Sylar's victims from the beginning of his unleashed existence.

"Yes, all of them," Sylar affirms coldly.

Still tentatively moving closer, Mohinder is next to Sylar peering down at him when Sylar speaks again.

"Why have you come only now?"

Sylar tilts his face upwards keeping his eyes on Mohinder's.

Mohinder removes one hand from his pocket and places the other on Sylar's shoulder.

"To say goodbye," Mohinder whispers.

Another unexpected expression of pain is reflected on Sylar's face.

"You look tired," Mohinder observes. "You should get some rest."

Sylar's expression returns to unreadable calmness and Mohinder steps behind him.

"Mohinder --,"

The force of the needle upwards from the neck, through the base of the skull to a most precise area of the brain cuts Sylar's speech off.

The effort it requires of Mohinder to inject the sedative overdose is paralleled only by the shout of pain that erupts from Sylar's throat.

There is no time for Sylar to react. He can still feel his body but his control over it is rapidly declining.

Mohinder removes the needle and places it on the table. He reaches into his shoulder bag and pulls out the second needle. Moving back to Sylar's side he kneels down next to the drugged man as the hazy delirium sets in.

Sylar's eyes shift towards him.

"I can…taste the…curare," Sylar labouredly gasps out. "I can…still turn off…the i.v."

Mohinder's eyes start to tear up at Sylar's remembrance of the beginning.

_Their beginning._

Sylar continues to talk.

"I…want to talk…to you more…before --,"

"You kill me?" Mohinder interjects in a joking manner filled with resignation.

Sylar manages a dazed smirk before answering.

"You never…did…get it."

Then it is just the two of them in an empty world of unintelligible signals. Mohinder sees it, a faint scattering of words trapped behind blackened pupils, held at bay by the same drugs that have brought them forward.

Looking down Mohinder brings the second needle to Sylar's arm.

"Mohinder?"

Again he looks up into Sylar's eyes curiously watching hm.

"This will take away the pain," Mohinder tries to offer an explanation.

A moment beats by before Sylar responds, "I…don't…feel pain."

"Maybe that was the problem," Mohinder quietly suggests.

Never breaking their look Mohinder presses the needle into Sylar's arm, eliciting a short intake of breath from him, and pushes in the second drug cocktail.

Mohinder fits his free hand into Sylar's, wrapping his fingers around the increasingly unresponsive joints.

"Mohinder?"

"Yes?"

"I was…right…about all of…it."

Mohinder almost laughs out of frustration at the absurdity of the statement. Even at the brink of death Sylar does not seek forgiveness or plead for redemption. He makes no apologies; instead he reaffirms everything he has done.

Just as Mohinder wants to yell at him that he has no conscience a realization dawns. Sylar may not feel remorse for his actions, any of them, but he is still justifying himself to Mohinder.

This is the closest thing to a crisis of conscience Sylar will ever have.

Mohinder could take this moment to tell Sylar he will never be forgiven for the hundreds he has murdered, for the lives he has joyfully ripped to shreds, for the father Mohinder never got a final chance with.

Mohinder could tell Sylar he deserves to burn in whatever hell he believes in, that he is a dead end evolutionary anomaly destined to decimate itself and leave no record of existing on this planet in the long run.

A mistake, a flash in the pan, Mohinder could hurt the last semblance of Sylar's pride before he slips into his own oblivion.

Or Mohinder could use this final moment to tell Sylar that the very nature of his being has been a driving force in the last handful of years for Mohinder. He could admit that, as distasteful as it is to say, the strides that Mohinder's research have made are in many ways due to the actions Sylar has carried out and the reasoning at the centre of it.

At the very least Sylar's unintentional contributions have been the complimentary hand to Mohinder's unrelenting persistence for knowledge in the, sometimes vain, attempt to do good.

Mohinder could tell Sylar that it has been years since he last tried to imagine how altered his life would have been had Sylar never existed; it has felt like a lifetime since that idea was allowed to fester.

He could confess to Sylar what he has never allowed to cross his lips before with anyone else: somewhere in the middle of it all, in some abstract and indefinable moment that he has long since given up trying to pinpoint, Sylar became a fact that Mohinder did not want to change.

And the offer had come, the terms of which only he and Hiro know.

The prophesized possibility to undo the past had been put forth so long ago, yet now it thumps his brain.

The sluggish Sylar before him reduces Mohinder to a singular decision. Had he chosen differently _this _Sylar would not have come to be. Mohinder feels a responsibility for the current destructive state of things. How fitting, he ruminates, that saving his father had not convinced him to rewrite the past but seeing Sylar turned into this has stroked his regret.

It seems unconscionable that the playing pieces have shifted so much since his first arrival in New York. He had chosen to allow all of Sylar's devastation to remain as is, based on some personal, misguided even, wants of his own.

Mohinder wonders if this is now as much a punishment for him as it is for Sylar.

_I was right about all of it. _

__Mohinder chooses the murky in between. It is a place Sylar and him have resided in since they first met, maybe even before then.

"No – only some of it," Mohinder says as he mindfully summons a very specific smile to his face, for old times sake. "You never did know when to stop. It's a good thing you met me."

He cannot say if it is his mind playing tricks, but he is certain he sees the spark of a familiar glint in Sylar's eyes.

Standing up Mohinder lets go of Sylar's hand, carefully placing it on the armrest of the chair. He moves behind the seated man who is struggling to stay awake. Swiftly he removes the knife from his shoulder bag.

It is the only way he can guarantee a painless death and a permanent one.

Placing his left hand on top of Sylar's head Mohinder gently tilts it back exposing Sylar's neck. Mohinder leans forward and lets his lips brush by Sylar's right ear.

"Goodbye Sylar," he whispers, vaguely hearing the roll of a "M" from the slackened mouth below him.

With one deliberate movement Mohinder steps back and using the knife in his right hand slices all the way through Sylar's neck, through flesh and bone.

The right words can be merciful. Without forgetting the past they can move forward.

Words have the power to create. 

 

 


End file.
